31/31 Day 1111: The Wii U is Regigigas

This is not going to be a joke blog, despite the title. I'm actually going to make a huge case for the Wii U in this blog, and well, have some humor in it. I'm really excited for what turns out below, and hope you guys enjoy it. So, to start out, for those not in the know, Regigigas is a Pokémon, and the king of the three Regi's: Regirock, Regice, and Registeel. And today, I was enlightened to the fact: the Wii U is very much like Regigigas.

Best. Blog Name. Ever.

Regigigas is unique. Unlike the three golems (Regice, Regirock, and Registeel), he doesn't have his type in his name, and instead has "gigas". He is, of course, the king of the golems, and is thus "giga", but otherwise, there's no real reason. He can learn the move Giga Impact, the most powerful normal type move, but other than that, I'm not really sure why he's named that. What's important about Regigigas, though, is not his name, but his ability. It's called Slow Start.

When a Pokémon has the ability known as Slow Start, it comes into battle with its attack and speed halved, and it stays this way for five turns. Regigigas is the only Pokémon to have this ability, and it's one of his weaknesses, as well as a possible strength, if used with moves like Trick Room or Skill Swap. However, for the purposes of this blog, we'll say it's a weakness, and that probably will help you understand my first point. The Wii U has been struggling in these first few months, having few key titles being released due to multiple delays, as well as sluggish sales. Sound a bit familiar? Sounds like the Wii U has the ability Slow Start, and considering it's about to get a rush of new titles every month, I think that Slow Start is about to end.

Now, that's not to say that's the only comparison we can make between Regigigas and the Wii U. Regigigas is kinda ancient, and has moss growing on him. This can be comparable to the fact that many people say their Wii U is collecting dust due to the "no games" drought. Admittedly, my Wii U has collected dust at times (though, not as much as my 360, to be perfectly honest), even though I love it. Still, I think this minor connection is another one we can make. However, there's another, major one, that's the one that requires digging, and also is possibly a major asset of the Wii U.

While Regigigas has his shortcomings, when he's used right, he can be a good asset to a Pokemon Trainer's team, because he can use Slow Start in special ways, and does also have the highest base attack stat of any Normal-type Pokemon, along with Slaking. This is where we see the Wii U's major asset, in it's hidden talents, that just take getting used to, like Regigigas'. First, to understand this, please take a look at the video below.

Thank you Cerny. Thank you.

In the above video, you can see Mark Cerny, the lead architect designer of the PlayStation 4 hardware, discussing the structure of the PS4's RAM. He first mentions how the PS4 has 246-Bit bus, which will allow their to be 176 GB per second for game usage, which will, to quote Cerny, "result in some pretty impressive graphics". He then goes on to mention that they could have undertaken a different approach when creating the PS4, and used a smaller, 128-Bit bus, which would result in only 88 GB per second, which "is not particularly good in next-generation terms", according to Cerny. I'm not pretending to be a tech-expect here, I'm just re-iterating from the research I've done.

Now, when Cerny mentions this inferior model, he says that they would be able to compensate for this reduced memory by using something called eDRAM, or "embedded dynamic random access memory". Cerny goes into detail that using eDRAM could actually be used, if it had enough, to allow 1 TB, or 1000 GB per second. Well, isn't that nice? If 127 GB is good for next-generation, what about possibly being able to use 1000? Okay, sure, I'm not the tech expert, I'm not saying they would have access to 1000 GB with this structure, but from what I understand, Cerny is saying the 1000 GB "would be achievable".

"The catch though," Cerny says, "is that the on-chip memory would need to be very small, and each game team would need to develop special techniques in order to manage it". This goes in contrast with the message PS4 has been sending out, that it would be "developer-friendly", so making the PS4 hard to develop for would be against their message, and thus it's apparent why Cerny decided to stick with his first mentioned design structure. Now, if you watched the entire video, you see it's creator (Doctre81, which, by the way, thank you for making this video, if you read this for some reason) discuss the last statement Cerny makes chronologically in the taped part of the conference he was speaking at. He says "sure, it takes awhile to figure out how to use it, but once you understand how to use that little cache of eDRAM, you unlock the full potential of the hardware", with then "O RLY" little clip playing, inserted of course by the video's creator.

Misunderstood.

Here, we see the connection to the Wii U. The system has been shown running games that look gorgeous, and next-gen, and yet, many have written it off as being inferior. Sure, it doesn't have that total 8 GB of RAM, nor top-of-the-line graphics cards, but what does it have? eDRAM. The Wii U's CPU is of IBM, and has a GPU with "a lot" of eDRAM, If this is the case, the Wii U should be able to put out just as many GB as Sony's PlayStation 4, and thus make it able to run some next-generation third-party software, despite what Electronic Arts has said. So, why has everyone, including third-parties, ignored this? The Wii U is Regigigas. It has latent powers, but it's hard to understand for a team, and thus, third-parties are flocking to the PS4 and even the One. This is understandable, if it's not as developer-friendly, but this does mean one important thing: the Wii U is not underpowered. It simply need to be unlocked for its full potential.

To reiterate one final time, what I've said is what I've researched, at very credible sources, as well as dumb connections I made between Regigigas and the Wii U. If someone wants to slam me below about how wrong I am, sure, go ahead, just know that's what I gathered from research, and so, you can take it up with Mark Cerny and such if I'm wrong. I hope you guys enjoyed this Wii U defense, and just remember-Regigigas for life.